GENEVA: Scientists at Europe's CERN research center have found a new subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe, which appears to be the boson imagined and named half a century ago by theoretical physicist Peter Higgs.

"We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature," CERN director general Rolf Heuer told a gathering of scientists and the world's media near Geneva on Wednesday.

"The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe."

Two independent studies of data produced by smashing proton particles together at CERN's Large Hadron Collider produced a convergent near-certainty on the existence of the new particle. It is unclear whether it is exactly the boson Higgs described.

But addressing scientists assembled in the CERN auditorium, Heuer posed them a question: "As a layman, I would say I think we have it. Would you agree?" A roar of applause said they did.

Higgs, now 83, from Edinburgh University was among six theorists who proposed the existence of a mechanism by which matter in the universe gained mass. Higgs himself argued that if there were an invisible field responsible for the process, it must be made up of particles. The particle is the emissary of the field and proves its existence.

He and others were at CERN to welcome news of what, to the embarrassment of many scientists, some commentators have labeled the "God particle" for its role in turning the Big Bang into a living universe: Clearly overwhelmed, his eyes welling up, Higgs told the symposium of fellow researchers: "It is an incredible thing that it has happened in my lifetime."

oh yes the Higgins...they say e’liesa broad way up ahead...given the tight budget though it’s hard to know whether to do more or doolittle...of course there are a good many theories already, some sketchy’uns and some very firmy’uns too....

If this is the “God Particle,” I think there will be an executive order soon to change the name to the “Obama particle”. Of course, depending on its mass, it might be the “Michelle Particle.” We’ll need some more funding to study that.

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posted on 07/04/2012 9:50:13 AM PDT
by dagogo redux
(A whiff of primitive spirits in the air, harbingers of an impending descent into the feral.)

A unified field theory. Maybe the control of gravity. Ships that can float up into space instead of having to be sent on enormous expensive and dangerous rockets. Maybe new ways of generation clean energy. This is just another piece of the puzzle gaining us a clearer picture of the way the universe works. It also helps us to know what questions to look into next.

I was reading Richard Feynman, who has to be my all-time favorite physicist-,was trying—unsucessfully— to explain just that to his very bright father, with regard to other sub-atomic particles. So help me to betsy, but they are more spirits with ectoplasm, than the billard ball atoms of the 19th century. Having to think in terms of probabilities than the certainies that newtonian physics once promised.

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